In an episode of the Simpsons, when Homer comes to a really bad pass, he yells:

I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me, Superman!

Both presidential candidates might have shouted the same cry this week, as the election draws nearer and partisan bickering becomes more intense. One source of particular trouble has been the state of the US economy, as Governor Romney's campaigning has largely rested on the argument that the US economy has suffered under the leadership of President Obama.

Enter Superman … in the form of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Friday's employment numbers showed a gain of 171,000 jobs in October, and the September job polls were revised upward to add another 84,000 jobs. This jobs number is so far above what everyone expected that it is astonishing. Most economists expected an addition of 125,000 jobs; 171,000 is enormous.

The numbers mean that, technically, President Obama created jobs during his four years in office, even though millions of people are still out of work. High Frequency Economics said that the trend in unemployment has been downward, "and not just for statistical reasons".

Housing, autos, consumer spending – all have been indicating a recovery that is starting in earnest. Taken as a trend, the jobs numbers this year indicate that more people are finding jobs. It's not nearly enough – there are still millions out of work – but it's more progress than anyone had dared hope for in the past three years.

But there has also been a kind of horse-race economics thinking, in newspapers and research reports. The economy has been treated like a month-by-month race towards some undefinable end, which we don't seem to be reaching anyway. Every month, with the jobs numbers, journalists and economists and analysts handicap whether the economy is recovering (that month) or suffering (that month). The big picture, hard to see, has been impossible to describe.

It's highlighted with the popular Twitter hashtag #NFPguesses, in which tweeters spend the morning of the jobs speculating on what the exact number of jobs added might be. It's a fun intellectual game, which actually only highlights how unpredictable and strange the unemployment figures have become.

So, perhaps, Superman (in the form of the BLS) is starting to put an end to the horse-race guesses of whether the economy is improving or not, and what that means for politicians, who, realistically, have no individual control over whether people are employed or not. It's become hard to doubt that a real, if modest, recovery in the economy is definitely happening.

And for Governor Mitt Romney, these jobs numbers, coming so close to the election, will naturally undercut his argument that the economy is bad – even though the jobs numbers are notoriously vague and inconclusive. That might leave him saying another famous quote from the Simpsons: